1994: Guns in America

Erik Larson ’78

Erik Larson explored America’s controversial debate regarding the right to bear arms in “Lethal Passage: The Story of a Gun,” which traces a single gun from manufacturer to distributor to the hands of a troubled teenager who carried out a tragic school shooting.

1994“Lethal Passage: The Story of a Gun”, from Chapter Three: The Lethal LandscapeBy Erik Larson

The nation began arming itself in earnest in the roaring sixties amid student protests, Cold War terror, race riots, and assassinations. Over the most tumultuous years, from 1967 to 1968, the number of handguns annually made available for sale to civilians in the U.S. rose by 50 percent—by some 802,000 pistols and revolvers—to 2.4 million, the greatest single annual leap in American history. In 1960, there were 16 million handguns in America; ten years later, the total had risen to more than 27 million. As of 1989, according to a study by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), there were 66.7 million handguns and 200 million firearms of all kinds in circulation in the United States.

If these guns were controlled by a legion of sober adults, we might have far less to worry about. One study of eleven thousand teenagers in ten states found that 41 percent of the boys and 21 percent of the girls said they could obtain a handgun whenever they wished. A July 1993 poll of students in grades six through twelve conducted by Louis Harris for the Harvard School of Public Health found that 59 percent said they could get a handgun if they wanted one; 21 percent said they could get one within the hour.

Handgun access among children is not strictly an urban problem. The Harris poll found the degree of access to be surprisingly constant between rural, suburban, and urban communities. More than 60 percent of children who lived in cities said they could get a handgun if they wished; 58 percent of suburban kids claimed they could too. A University of North Carolina study of adolescents in suburban and rural communities in the Southeast found that 9 percent of the boys actually owned a handgun. Boys typically received their first firearm—usually a shotgun or a rifle but seven percent of the time a handgun—at the age of twelve and a half. More than a fifth, however, received their first guns at the very responsible age of ten.

Kids have begun using their guns against each other. From 1965 to 1990, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the rate at which children age ten through seventeen were arrested for homicide increased by 332 percent, despite a slight drop in that segment of the population. Anyone inclined to dismiss these figures as reflecting merely the high rate of homicide in the nation’s black urban neighborhoods would be profoundly mistaken. The incidence of homicide arrests of white children increased in the same period by 425 percent.

Increasingly, you don’t need to own a gun or be the intended target of someone else’s gun to get shot. As guns have proliferated, the rate at which bystanders are wounded and killed has soared. In 1985 stray bullets killed four New Yorkers; in 1990 they killed forty.

Gun merchants and hobbyists steadfastly protest that guns aren’t the problem and, even if they were, that gun ownership is explicitly endorsed by the Second Amendment of the Constitution—the much misquoted “right to bear arms” clause—and it therefore as much a part of the American way as, say, voting. A comparison of international homicide statistics proves that guns do indeed set America apart from the rest of the developed world.

In 1987, America’s civilian guns were used to murder 3,187 young men age fifteen to twenty-four, accounting for three-fourths of the annual homicide rate in this demographic group of 21.9 per 100,000 people.

In Canada only seventeen young men were murdered with firearms, for an overall rate of 2.9 per 100,000.

In Japan, with 0.5 homicides per 100,000 people, eight young men died in gunshot homicides—as many killings as New York police encounter on a single busy weekend.

What accounts for the difference? Incidence of poverty, surely. Racial division. America’s frontier history and the myths it conjured. The influence of television and movies.

And the sheer number of guns.

It is easy to challenge any study that purports to show a direct relationship between firearms proliferation and the rate of violent crime. Which came first, the challenge goes, the rise in gun sales or the crime rate? Did the increase in the number of guns encourage more people to commit crime? Or did the increase in crime drive more people to buy guns to defend themselves? The ease of making this challenge and the impossibility of ever fully defending against it have allowed the gun camp to obscure the debate over firearms distribution, when in fact there is an abundance of credible evidence that where there are more guns, there are more deaths from guns. The NRA’s sloganeering notwithstanding, the evidence suggests that guns do indeed kill people.

A landmark study in King County, Washington, which includes Seattle, found that a gun kept at home was forty-three times more likely to be used to kill its owner, a family member, or a friend than an intruder. A Pittsburgh psychiatric hospital reported that the mere presence of a gun in the home more than doubles the odds that an adolescent member of the family will commit suicide. In 1987, Dr. Garen Wintemute, a researcher with the University of California at Davis Medical Center, plotted the annual firearm homicide rate per 100,000 people for the years 1946 through 1982. On the same graph, he plotted ATF’s estimate of the number of new firearms made available for sale each year. The two lines track each other over the page with the eerie precision of a pair of figure skaters, both peaking around 1974, both dipping in 1976, both rising to another peak, both falling in concert toward 1982. (The rates of both have increased since then.) A 1986 study from the National Institute of Mental Health found similarly striking correlations between the increased proliferation of firearms and the rate of gunshot suicide among people age ten to twenty-four.

One of the foremost researchers in this forbidding territory is Franklin E. Zimring, a law professor at Earl Warren Legal Institute of the University of California, Berkeley, who has studied the issue since the 1960s. He established that although handguns only account for about a third of the guns owned in America, they are used in more than 75 percent of gunshot homicides and 80 percent of firearm-related robberies. “On average,” Zimring reported, rifles and shotguns are seven times less likely than handguns to be used in criminal violence.” In one of his early studies he reviewed records of 16,000 violent assaults in Chicago to see whether the attacker’s choice of knife or gun influenced the outcome. He found, first, that in seven of ten cases where the victim died, the attacker inflicted only one wound. That is, the attacker did not repeatedly stab or shoot the victim to make sure he was dead. The major difference among these attacks was that “an assault with a gun was five times more likely to result in a fatality than an assault with a knife.” Zimring described the heightened danger posed by the attacker’s choice of a gun as an “instrumentality effect” attributable to the inherent lethal character of guns.

In one of the most compelling studies of the impact of firearm proliferation, Dr. Arthur Kellermann, an emergency-medicine physician at Emory University, and associates from the Universities of Washington and British Columbia studied the rates of homicide and assault in Seattle and Vancouver from 1980 through 1986. The cities are close to each other. They have similar economies and similar geophysical locations. Their populations have a similar demographic profile. Presumably they watch the same movies and many of the same TV shows. During the study period, they also had similar assault rates. They differed markedly, however, in the degree to which they regulated access to firearms. Vancouver allowed gun sales only to people who could demonstrate a legitimate reason for having a firearm. Seattle had few regulations. The researchers found that attackers in Seattle were almost eight times more likely to use a handgun than those in Vancouver. Seattle’s homicide rate, moreover, was five times higher, with handgun-related killings accounting for most of the difference.

The proliferation of guns continues, however. In the 1980s gun manufacturers feared they might have sold so many guns to American consumers that they had sated the market. Indeed, slack demand helped cause the failure of Charter Arms and drove Colt’s Manufacturing into bankruptcy. Gunmakers, cheered on by the National Rifle Association, sought to improve their prospects by pitching guns—handguns in particular—as the only sure way to protect ourselves against crime. The Los Angeles riots of 1992 proved a godsend. Millions of TV viewers watched a white truck driver beaten senseless by black marauders. They saw Korean businessmen, the new heroes of American enterprise, brandishing guns to guard their inner-city businesses in scenes that evoked our most favorite Wild West myths: a good man standing alone, gun drawn and squinting into the setting sun, waiting for nightfall and the next attack of the barbaric hordes, be they Indians, cattle rustlers, train robbers, or, in this modern transmogrification, black gang-bangers in the ghetto. The most striking images and the most beneficial to the gun marketers were those scenes played over and over again of a group of L.A.’s Finest retreating posthaste to their police cars and leaving the good settlers of Indian country to their own devices.

The NRA was quick to extract the obvious message of the riots: you better get a gun because no one else is going to protect you. A 1992 recruitment ad for the NRA featured blocks of text against photographs of looting, burning, and destruction. “WHAT WILL IT TAKE?” the ad asked. “Must your glass be shattered? Must your flesh and blood be maimed? Must your livelihood be looted? Must all you’ve built be torn down? Must your once-proud nation surrender to more gun-control experimentation while its citizens tremble behind deadbolts and barred windows? . . . What will it take before you stand up with the one group that will stand for no more? . . . We warned gun laws would fail, and they have. We said gun control is wrong, and L. A. PROVES IT.”

The newest targets for this sales pitch are women, considered especially receptive, the argument goes, because so many now are single heads of households and increasingly hold important jobs that require late hours and lots of travel. Gun magazines, such as the American Rifleman, published by the NRA, and Women and Guns, published by the Second Amendment Foundation, routinely carry stories about armed women who killed, wounded, or at least scared off their attackers. Such testimonials may require close examination, at least in light of one example printed in a 1989 issue of American Rifleman. The story described how a female cabdriver in Phoenix, Arizona, picked up a customer early one morning, only to have him hold a broken bottle to her throat and force her to drive to a deserted area. He took $70, then pushed the woman from the cab. “When her assailant ordered her to crawl in the dirt, [she] responded by emptying her pocket semiauto into him,” the magazine reported. “He died later in a hospital.”

By emptying her gun the cabdriver did indeed save herself, but not quite in the way this heroic account would have us believe. She later told the Arizona Republic how her enraged and wounded attacker then seized her gun, jabbed the barrel into her neck, and pulled the trigger—not once, but several times.

Had she not emptied the gun first, clearly her attacker would have done so.

The American Rifleman does not print tales of the risks associated with firearms ownership, such as the story carried by the Associated Press in October 1991 about a woman who shot herself in the face late one night. She blamed the accident, the AP reported, “on sleepy confusion between two objects she keeps under her pillow—her asthma medication dispenser and a .38-caliber revolver.” The dispatch then quoted the woman as saying, “I didn’t even know I had hold of the gun until it went off.” She survived with surprisingly minor injuries.

Gun manufacturers now peddle their weapons to women using advertisements that show guns juxtaposed with photographs of small children and that describe gun ownership as a necessary act of women’s liberation. A controversial Colt ad, run in 1992, featured photographs of two Colt pistols under a larger photograph of a mother putting her young daughter and her Raggedy Ann doll to bed. “Self-protection is more than your right,” the ad reads, “it’s your responsibility.” Even Davis Industries of Chino, California, gets into the act. “What with all the crime in the streets these days,” the Davis ad says, “a woman needs a bodyguard more than ever”—a rather ironic declaration, given that the company’s cheap handguns and those produced by its sister company, Raven Arms, are among the guns most often implicated in urban crime.

A Smith & Wesson ad shows a young woman intently firing the company’s LadySmith revolver at a shooting range. This is the newest incarnation of the LadySmith. The company produced its first LadySmith, a small .22 revolver designed for a woman’s hand, in 1902 and manufactured it until 1921, when it learned some disturbing news: the revolver had become the weapon of choice among prostitutes. Horrified, the company quickly halted production. The woman in the most recent ad appears under a headline that asks, “What Would Mom Think Now?”—a slogan clearly meant to evoke the famous or perhaps infamous Virginia Slims pitchline, “You’ve come a long way, baby!”

“We’re seeing the same thing we saw with promoting cigarettes,” said Dr. Wintemute, the University of California researcher. “An inherently hazardous product is being associated with images of equality for women, of liberation for women, of independence for women, with the added approach of using fear—which you can’t use to sell cigarettes but you can certainly use to sell guns.”

We compiled this collection by culling the school’s archives, researching the recipients of a wide array of journalism prizes, consulting with colleagues and scouring some of the best journalism ever produced. In fall 2011, we enlisted our faculty and a group of distinguished judges to vote for their favorites on the first installment of 50 Great Stories. Then, in 2012, we invited alumni to nominate and vote on the selections they thought most worthy of inclusion. The result is this compilation.

These stories demonstrate the historic sweep of the work of Columbia journalists and their curiosity, courage, compassion, diversity, persistence and versatility. The list is intended not as a ranking of the “best” work, but as a representative snapshot of their achievements over the past 100 years. The term “story” is used loosely; in some cases the entry is for a single work, and in other instances the entry is a more panoramic subject to which the journalist made a significant contribution.

1 1915: World War ICarl Ackerman ’13
Carl Ackerman, among the earliest graduates of the Journalism School and in later years the dean who transformed the school into a graduate institution, reported extensively from Berlin and London for United Press on the grueling grind of the Great War.

2 1917: The Russian RevolutionGeorge Sokolsky ’57
George Sokolsky would later become a prominent foe of communism, but in early 1917 he was expelled from the Journalism School for socialist activism and did not receive his degree for 40 years. Unfazed, Sokolsky went to Moscow to cover the Russian Revolution for the Russian Daily News, where watching the Bolshevik coup in “Red October” shattered his idealism forever.

3 1923: The Sunday TimesLester Markel ’14
In more than 40 years as Sunday editor of the New York Times, beginning in 1923, Lester Markel created the Week in Review section, influenced the paper’s coverage of countless issues and shaped one of the great hubs of American discourse, the Sunday issue of the Times.

4 1929: Modern ArtEmily Genauer ’30
Beginning her career with Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World in 1929, Emily Genauer spent more than four decades championing then-controversial modern artists like Marc Chagall and Diego Rivera, shaping Americans’ perceptions of fine art, and resisting editorial pressure to ignore leftist artists like Pablo Picasso.

5 1929: The Great DepressionMerryle Stanley Rukeyser ’17
As one of America’s most well-known financial journalists and most popular syndicated columnists, Merryle Stanley Rukeyser wrote extensively on the Crash of ’29 and the Great Depression, the worst economic catastrophe of the 20th century. He was also the first to teach courses in economic and financial writing at the Journalism School.

*6 1934: Eleanor Roosevelt Dorothy Ducas ‘26
The first woman to receive a Pulitzer Traveling Scholarship, Dorothy Ducas was with the International News Service when she unforgettably profiled Eleanor Roosevelt’s efforts to expand what first ladies — and women in general — could achieve on the public stage. The mutual admiration between the two pioneering women blossomed into a friendship that lasted decades.

7 1935: The Lindbergh Kidnapping TrialJohn Hohenberg ’27
As a young reporter with the New York Evening Journal, John Hohenberg covered the controversial “trial of the century” in which Bruno Richard Hauptmann was tried and sentenced to death for the murder of Charles Lindbergh’s son. Hohenberg later returned to the Journalism School, where he became a legendary professor and an administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes.

*8 1940: World War IIOtto Tolischus ‘16
Otto Tolischus won a Pulitzer Prize for his New York Times reporting that chronicled Europe’s descent into World War II, including the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and Germany's invasion of Poland. Expelled from Nazi Germany, he reported from Tokyo until Pearl Harbor, when he was held captive by Japanese forces.

9 1941: America’s Natural WondersHal Borland ’23
Born on the plains of Nebraska, Hal Borland wrote about nature with the eye of a reporter and the soul of a poet. In 1941, he began contributing a series of what he termed “outdoor editorials” to the New York Times that captured the profound beauty of America’s natural landscapes and prefigured the environmental movement.

10 1944: D-DayA.J. Liebling ’25
One of the most admired journalists of the 20th century, A.J. Liebling covered World War II extensively and was with the Allies when they stormed Omaha Beach on D-Day. A recent critic called Liebling’s harrowing and definitive account for the New Yorker a “finished masterpiece of reportage.”

11 1945: Covering CongressHenrietta Poynter ’22
Until Henrietta Poynter helped found Congressional Quarterly in 1945, small newsrooms and ordinary citizens had few means of researching their legislators’ records. Once CQ became available, information about Congress became democratized and millions of citizens were empowered in unprecedented ways.

12 1946: Creating the Postwar WorldPeter Kihss ’33
Writing for the New York Herald Tribune before his legendary tenure at the New York Times, Peter Kihss reported extensively on the first years of the United Nations, beginning with the search for a headquarters and proceeding to the founding of Israel and the high-stakes early stages of the Cold War.

13 1946: Fighting Jim CrowHodding Carter
After spending a formative year at the Journalism School, Hodding Carter left before graduating to begin a remarkable career in which he earned the moniker “Spokesman of the New South” for his eloquent opposition to Jim Crow laws. He won a Pulitzer Prize for writing against racial discrimination in his Mississippi newspaper, the Greenville Delta Democrat-Times.

14 1950: The Korean WarMarguerite Higgins ’42
Marguerite Higgins, who had stunned her male classmates by winning the coveted position of campus correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune, became the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for her hard-hitting front-line coverage of the Korean War. She was named Associated Press’ Woman of the Year in 1951.

15 1956: Uprisings in the USSRFlora Lewis ’42
In an era when accounts of the Soviet Union were often tainted by ideology, Flora Lewis reported fearlessly for the New York Times on mass unrest in Hungary and Poland as citizens protested Soviet domination and were brutally suppressed.

*16 1957: The Civil Rights MovementBenjamin Fine ‘32
Benjamin Fine was in Arkansas to report for the New York Times on the integration of the Little Rock Nine to all-white Central High School. Facing howling mobs of segregationists on a daily basis, Fine was battered black and blue, but it didn’t stop him from getting the story.

*17 1957: Sputnik William Jorden ‘48
As head of the New York Times’ Moscow bureau, William Jorden was in Russia when the Sputnik launch shocked the world, and he became one of America’s most influential journalists covering the Cold War. He and his team won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 1958. Later, Jorden became one of America’s most preeminent diplomats.

*18 1959: The Slums of New York CityWoody Klein ‘52
Woody Klein went undercover to investigate the appalling conditions in slum housing in some of the city’s poorest areas. His award-winning 11-part series and a subsequent book helped spur reform efforts in City Hall and beyond.

*19 1960: Integrating New OrleansDavid Zinman ‘52
Reporting for the Associated Press, David Zinman vividly portrayed the courage and conviction of two white families who sent their children to the first New Orleans school to be integrated, despite the rage of other whites engaged in a racial boycott.

20 1961: Journalism, ReviewedJames Boylan ’51
James Boylan helped launch a great tradition of deep reporting on journalism and the industry when he co-founded Columbia Journalism Review, which has offered crucial insights for more than five decades. Boylan served as the magazine’s first managing editor and later became a historian of the Journalism School.

21 1962: VietnamBeverly Deepe Keever ’58
Beverly Deepe arrived in Vietnam as a freelance reporter in 1962 and remained for seven continuous years, becoming the longest-serving Western journalist to cover the war. In 1969, the Christian Science Monitor nominated her for the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting.

22 1963: The Movies as ArtJudith Crist ’45
Beginning at the New York Herald Tribune in 1963, and serving for decades as one of America’s pre-eminent film critics, Judith Crist offered hard-hitting film criticism that explored the medium with the care and respect afforded to other art forms. Crist has taught at the Journalism School for more than 50 years.

23 1966: China’s Cultural RevolutionRobert Elegant ’51
Robert Elegant, who covered East Asia and served as Hong Kong bureau chief for Newsweek and the Los Angeles Times, gave Western readers a detailed and comprehensive look at how Mao Tse-tung’s brutal Cultural Revolution changed China in his book Mao’s Great Revolution.

*24 1966: The Globalization of CrimeMonroe Karmin ‘53
Monroe Karmin won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting — at great risk to himself and co-author Stanley Penn — in the Wall Street Journal on the links between American organized crime and gambling in the Bahamas, a pioneering report on the globalization of crime. Karmin later became president of the National Press Club.

*25 1968: Life in the GhettoJoe Saltzman ‘62
In the aftermath of the Watts riots, Joe Saltzman produced a groundbreaking documentary, "Black on Black," for CBS, capturing the diverse voices and perspectives of African-Americans in Los Angeles. Among other honors, the film received the Edward R. Murrow Award, the first NAACP image award and a regional Emmy from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

26 1968: Life on the FieldDick Schaap (Rice Fellow)’56
Later to become a beloved sports broadcaster, Dick Schaap virtually created the sports autobiography when he collaborated with Jerry Kramer on Instant Replay, one of the best books ever written about football.Â “The words may not be exactly theirs,” Schaap said of the players he worked with, “but the thoughts and the voice are.”

27 1969: The Moon LandingJohn Noble Wilford (Ford Fellow) ’62
Several years after his time at the Journalism School, John Noble Wilford got the entire front page of the New York Times to himself on July 21, 1969, for his report on Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s historic walk on the moon. Wilford later won two Pulitzer Prizes for National Reporting.

*28 1970: South African ApartheidJim Hoagland ‘69
Jim Hoagland won an International Reporting Pulitzer for his penetrating work about apartheid in South Africa, published in the Washington Post. He went on to receive a second Pulitzer, for commentary, in 1991.

*29 1971: Weathermen TerrorismMel Gussow ‘56
Perhaps best known for his arts criticism and conversations with great playwrights, Mel Gussow also wrote the definitive account, for New York magazine, of the 1970 Weathermen town house explosion in Greenwich Village that symbolized the loss of innocence of the 1960s counterculture and the troubled decade that followed.

30 1972: WatergateHoward Simons ’52
As managing editor of the Washington Post, Howard Simons received the first phone call about the Watergate break-in, coined the name “Deep Throat” for the informant later revealed as FBI official W. Mark Felt and played a key role overseeing the investigation that brought down a president.

*31 1973: Exposing COINTELPROCarl Stern ‘59
As a reporter for NBC News, Carl Stern made groundbreaking use of the Freedom of Information Act to uncover the FBI’s secret counterintelligence programs to harass and “neutralize” organizations and individuals whose political activities it deemed unwelcome. His Peabody-award winning enterprise led to Congressional hearings and significant reforms.

32 1974: The Power BrokerRobert Caro (Carnegie Fellow) ‘68
Robert Caro (Carnegie Fellow) ‘68 wrote The Power Broker, a Pulitzer Prize-winning account of Robert Moses and the making of modern New York City, based on years of intensive research. It was selected by the Modern Library as one of the hundred greatest non-fiction books of the 20th century.

*33 1975: The Last Flight from Da NangBruce Dunning ‘63
Bruce Dunning produced an unforgettable CBS Evening News segment about the chaotic last Western flight out of Da Nang, Vietnam, when a plane intended for women and children refugees was stormed by South Vietnamese soldiers desperate to escape.

34 1978: The Modern Political Talk ShowPatrick J. Buchanan ’62
After a stint writing editorials for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat and several years working in the White House, Pat Buchanan joined liberal commentator Tom Braden to pioneer the debate-driven modern political talk show, initially on Washington radio and then as founding co-hosts of CNN’s long-running Crossfire series.

*35 1980: Mount St. Helens Rick Seifert ‘69
Rick Seifert visited and reported on the area surrounding Mount St. Helens in the ominous days just before its eruption killed dozens of people and devastated hundreds of miles of Washington State. Seifert shared in a Local Reporting Pulitzer Prize for his haunting portraits of a community on the verge of disaster.

*36 1984: Famine in Africa
Josh Friedman ‘68
Josh Friedman, fellow reporter Dennis Bell, and photographer Ozier Muhammad of Newsday sparked an international outcry and won an International Reporting Pulitzer Prize in 1985 for their eye-opening reports on widespread hunger in Africa.

*37 1985: The Last Years of Josef MengeleRalph Blumenthal ‘64
After years of intrepid reporting on the hunt for Nazi war criminals amid the intrigue of the Cold War, Ralph Blumenthal traveled to Brazil for the New York Times to confirm the death of Auschwitz “Angel of Death” Josef Mengele and reconstruct his last years of hiding in South America.

38 1985: The Marcos RegimeLewis M. Simons ’64
Lewis M. Simons shared a Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting for indelible coverage in the San Jose Mercury News of the corruption of the Marcos regime in the Philippines. Bombshell revelations that Marcos was looting the country helped catalyze the People Power movement that toppled the regime and inspired similar demonstrations in the Soviet Union.

39 1985: South Africa in Black and WhiteJoseph Lelyveld ’60
Joseph Lelyveld won a Pulitzer Prize for his book Move Your Shadow: South Africa, Black and White, a moving portrait of how apartheid shaped South Africa and the lives of its legally unequal populations.

*40 1986: The Iran-Contra ScandalAndres Oppenheimer ‘78
Andres Oppenheimer and colleagues at the Miami Herald sparked a global conversation on American executive power and arms deals with their Pulitzer Prize-winning uncovering of the scandal in which members of the Reagan administration, in secret defiance of Congress, sold arms to Iran and diverted the profits to Nicaraguan rebels.

*41 1987: Christmas in VietnamJames Lubetkin ‘66
Many years after spending a Christmas serving in Vietnam, James Lubetkin contributed a thoughtful commentary to the Christian Science Monitor reflecting on a peaceful night during wartime and the violent conflicts that afflict humanity year after year.

42 1987: The Secret GovernmentJoan Konner ’61
Later to become dean of the Journalism School, Joan Konner produced a Bill Moyers documentary for PBS, The Secret Government: The Constitution in Crisis, which chillingly detailed a secret federal network (exposed to the public through Oliver North and the Iran-Contra scandal) that pursues objectives outside the scrutiny of the American democratic process. The film gained a new following in the aftermath of 9/11.

43 1988: The Modern Presidential CampaignRichard Ben Cramer ’72
Richard Ben Cramer wrote the definitive account of how presidential campaigns are waged and won in his classic What It Takes, a panoramic chronicle of the 1988 presidential primaries and election based on interviews with more than a thousand people.

45 1989: Scandal in IndiaN. Ram ’68
N. Ram, former editor-in-chief of The Hindu, was instrumental in breaking the Bofors scandal, a bombshell story about corruption in military spending that brought down Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and changed the course of Indian politics.

*46 1990: Covering the News MediaHoward Kurtz ‘75
In his columns and on television, media critic Howard Kurtz has extensively covered the evolution of the media landscape from the dawn of the mass Internet age through the dramatic transformations that continue today.

*47 1990: The Voices of Women in AsiaElisabeth Bumiller ‘79
Elisabeth Bumiller advanced global understanding of the experiences of South Asian and Japanese women — and provided a safe space for them to share their voices — in her unforgettable books May You Be the Mother of a Hundred Sons: A Journey Among the Women of India and The Secrets of Mariko: A Year in the Life of a Japanese Woman and Her Family.

*48 1991: Subway LivesJim Dwyer ‘80
Jim Dwyer offered an intimate look at the human faces behind and within America’s most famous mass transit system in his Newsday columns, later expanded into a book, Subway Lives: 24 Hours in the Life of the New York Subways. He went on to share a 1992 Spot News reporting Pulitzer Prize with Newsday colleagues and in 1995 received the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary.

49 1991: Fall of the USSRStuart Loory ’58 and Ann Imse ’76
In Seven Days That Shook the World: The Collapse of Soviet Communism, Stuart Loory and Ann Imse drew upon extensive coverage by CNN and the Associated Press to craft a sweeping portrait of a superpower’s downfall.

50 1994: Guns in AmericaErik Larson ’78
Erik Larson explored America’s controversial debate regarding the right to bear arms in Lethal Passage: The Story of a Gun, which traces a single gun from manufacturer to distributor to the hands of a troubled teenager who carried out a tragic school shooting.

51 1994: The Working PoorTony Horwitz ’83
Tony Horwitz won a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for his investigations into the working conditions faced by many low-income Americans, including poultry workers and nursing home aides. His memorable coverage was published in the Wall Street Journal.

*52 1994: Living DeafLeah Hager Cohen ‘91
In her book Train Go Sorry: Inside a Deaf World, Leah Hager Cohen sensitively portrayed the experiences and challenges of students at a New York City school for the deaf, as well as the difficult challenges of bridging the deaf and hearing worlds, and the civil rights movement of the deaf community.

53 1995: The Lives of Muslim WomenGeraldine Brooks ’83
Geraldine Brooks raised public awareness of the diverse experiences and perspectives of Muslim women in her revealing book, Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Muslim Women.

54 1995: Journalism’s Digital FutureJosh Quittner ’86
Long a renowned chronicler of the digital revolution in news and communication, Josh Quittner was among the earliest and most influential reporters to explore how the Internet would transform journalism.

*55 1996: The Color of WaterJames McBride ‘80
In his best-selling book The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to his White Mother, James McBride revealed the fascinating story of his mother, a white Orthodox Jewish immigrant from Eastern Europe who encountered adversity and racism and was disowned by her family after she married a black man.

*56 1996: Race and the Drug WarReginald Stuart ‘71
In an article published in Emerge magazine, Reginald Stuart exposed the lengthy mandatory sentence of 24½ years imposed on Kemba Smith, a black college student with no criminal record for a drug conspiracy charge in connection with her abusive boyfriend. Stuart’s reporting helped get her sentence commuted to time served – 6½ years – and contributed to a growing movement for reform of sentencing laws.

57 1997: Protecting the RainforestJohn Quinones ’79
John Quinones won an Emmy and introduced audiences to an important voice in the environmental movement with his ABC Primetime report on the efforts of biologist Michael Fay to create a national preserve in the rainforests of Congo and protect priceless wildlife from poachers.

58 1997: Tuesdays with MorrieMitch Albom ’82
Mitch Albom inspired millions of readers with his heartwarming account of the wit, wisdom and grace of a great teacher, Morrie Schwartz, in the best-selling Tuesdays With Morrie.

*59 1999: The Toll of Alcohol AbuseEric Newhouse ‘72
Eric Newhouse of Montana’s Great Falls Tribune won an Explanatory Reporting Pulitzer Prize for his stark series on the damage alcohol abuse causes to individual lives and to society at large, through sensitive reporting on the microcosm of his community.

60 2000: How Race Is Lived in AmericaMirta Ojito ’01
Mirta Ojito, now a professor at the Journalism School, shared a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for her contribution to the New York Times series “How Race Is Lived In America,” the haunting story of best friends from Cuba, one black and one white, who drift apart as they lead segregated lives in the United States.

61 2000: The Threat from PakistanSteve Kroft ’75
Steve Kroft won a duPont-Columbia Award for his 60 Minutes report, “America’s Worst Nightmare?,” which prophetically examined the threat to U.S. and international security from Pakistan’s political instability, ties to Islamic militants and nuclear technology.

62 2001: The Faces of PovertyManuel Rivera-Ortiz ’98
The global journey of photographer Manuel Rivera-Ortiz to document the experience of impoverished people in developing nations has resulted in powerful images that capture the visceral essence of life in slums around the world.

63 2001: 9/11 Tim Townsend ’99
Tim Townsend was a financial reporter just blocks away from the World Trade Center when a plane suddenly struck its north tower. Running outside, he witnessed a second plane hit the south tower and the terrifying collapse of both buildings. In an article for Rolling Stone, Townsend indelibly captured what it was like at Ground Zero that historic morning.

Deborah Solomon, David Wessel, Laurie Cohen, Mark Maremont, Theo Francis and Julia Angwin shared in a Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Reporting for a Wall Street Journal series on the roots and impact of several corporate scandals that became symbolic of the modern gilded age.

65 2002: The Clergy Sex Abuse ScandalEileen McNamara ’76
Eileen McNamara helped expose sexual abuse perpetrated by Catholic clergy over the course of decades, and subsequent efforts to cover up the scandal, in her powerful columns for the Boston Globe.*66 2003: A Broken Child Welfare SystemBarak Goodman ‘86
Barak Goodman was a producer for a hard-hitting three-part Frontline report on the flaws and failures of America’s child welfare system, based on extraordinary access to Maine’s Department of Human Services and attention to the tragic death of a little girl. The report received a duPont-Columbia Award and culminated in a national dialogue in collaboration with the Fred Friendly Seminars.

*67 2002: Faulty Evidence, Unjust VERDICTS Michael Devlin ‘77
As news director of KHOU-TV, Michael Devlin shared a duPont-Columbia Award for overseeing a bombshell series of reports that revealed a pattern of faulty DNA test results from the Houston Police Department’s crime lab. The reports spurred an independent audit of the lab, reexamination of evidence in hundreds of cases, the release of a prisoner and national attention to crime lab practices.

*68 2003: ‘On Top of the World’Andrew C. Revkin ‘82
Andrew C. Revkin took his audience on an extraordinary journey to the “pirouetting ice floes” near the North Pole as he reported on an ambitious effort to install climate research equipment at the top of the world. His account ran on the front page of the New York Times and as a multimedia package.

69 2003: Tyranny in ZimbabweAndrew Meldrum ‘77
In commentary for the Guardian written shortly after he was expelled from Zimbabwe after 23 years of reporting, Andrew Meldrum reflected on the nation’s tragic journey from hope to despair under the increasingly tyrannical rule of Robert Mugabe.

70 2003: Wal-Mart and GlobalizationAbigail Goldman ‘93
Abigail Goldman was awarded a National Reporting Pulitzer Prize for a series of stories she co-wrote about how Wal-Mart had become the largest company in the world in an age of globalization, and how its ascent has affected people in America and across the developing world.

71 2004: Rwanda and GenocideDele Olojede ’88
Dele Olojede won a Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for his unforgettable portrait, published in Newsday, of how Rwanda was weaving itself back together a decade after the genocide and mass rape of the Tutsi tribe.

72 2004: Abu GhraibScott Higham ’85
Scott Higham and colleagues at the Washington Post were nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for their “relentless, unflinching chronicle” of alleged prisoner abuse perpetrated by American soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Â The story marked a major turning point in public opinion about the war.*73 2004: The Secret EpidemicJacob Levenson ‘99
In his groundbreaking book The Secret Epidemic: The Story of AIDS and Black America, Jacob Levenson delved deeply into the seldom-told stories of HIV-positive African-Americans and explored a diversity of perspectives why black Americans suffer disproportionately from AIDS.

*74 2005: Israel’s Withdrawal from GazaAndrea Stone ‘81
On location for USA Today as Israel evicted Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip as part of unilateral disengagement, Andrea Stone offered empathetic portraits of the soldiers, settlers, Palestinians and others at a historic moment in the long conflict.

75 2005: Hurricane KatrinaStephanie Stokes ’83, Jim Varney ’89, Michael Keller ’05 and Joshua Norman ’05
Stephanie Stokes, Jim Varney, Michael Keller, Joshua Norman and colleagues shared a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2006 for their courageous and nuanced coverage of Hurricane Katrina and its disastrous aftermath, during which their newspapers, the Biloxi Sun Herald and the New Orleans Times-Picayune, were essential to the recovery effort.

*76 2005: Duke Cunningham and CorruptionBruce Bigelow ‘79
Bruce Bigelow shared in a National Reporting Pulitzer Prize for indefatigable reporting in the San Diego Union-Tribune on bribe-taking by California Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham’s bribe-taking and the infamous napkin “bribe menu” that became a symbol of congressional corruption.

*77 2005: THE HUMAN ELVISAlanna Nash ‘74
In Elvis and The Memphis Mafia, Alanna Nash dug beneath decades of mythmaking to piece together an oral history of one of the greatest legends of 20th-century music.

*78 2006: An Imam in AmericaAndrea Elliott ‘99
Andrea Elliott earned a Feature Writing Pulitzer Prize for her sensitive and insightful portrait in the New York Times of an immigrant imam’s efforts to lead his congregants in an alien nation and adapt to life in America.

*79 2006: The Armenian GenocideMichael Bobelian ‘03
In a fascinating story published in Legal Affairs magazine, Michael Bobelian chronicled a class-action lawsuit spearheaded by an Armenian-American lawyer, Vartkes Yeghiayan, aimed at publicizing the Ottoman government's genocide of Armenians in the early 20th century and securing insurance money for victims' rightful heirs.

80 2006: Tragedy in DarfurLydia Polgreen ’00
Lydia Polgreen won a George Polk Prize for Foreign Reporting for her and groundbreaking reporting in the New York Times on the human toll of the conflict in Darfur.

81 2007: The Great RecessionDavid Cho ’97
David Cho won the Best of Knight-Bagehot Business Journalism Award for his lucid and far-ranging coverage in the Washington Post of the credit crisis that led to one of the worst economic disasters since the Great Depression.

*82 2007: Capital PunishmentTimothy O’Leary ‘82
In a provocative commentary for KERA, the NPR affiliate in Dallas-Fort Worth, Timothy O’Leary weighed the morality of the death penalty and argued that Texas’ reputation for capital punishment has made the state an international pariah.

*83 2007: Sports and Coronary HealthDavid Epstein ‘04
Reporting for Sports Illustrated, David Epstein delved into hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, an often undetected genetic disease that is the most common cause of death for young athletes, to investigate what could be done to save their lives.

*84 2007: Remaking the Democratic PartyMatt Bai ‘94
In his acclaimed book The Argument: Inside the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics, Matt Bai crafted an in-depth portrait of a diverse group of bloggers, activists and party leaders contending for the future of the Democratic Party and building the first political movement of the Internet age.

85 2008: The Obama ElectionSuzanne Malveaux ’91
Offering insightful and enterprising coverage on CNN, Suzanne Malveaux played an important role in chronicling the 2008 election of the nation’s first African-American president.

*86 2008: Recycling Abuse Solly Granatstein ‘94
Solly Granatstein produced Scott Pelley’s 60 Minutes investigation of U.S. recycling companies that illegally ship old computer equipment to China, where poor villagers dismantle it for valuable but highly toxic components. The report won numerous awards, including an Emmy and the George Polk Award.

87 2008: Af-Pak EscalationC.J. Chivers ’95
C.J. Chivers shared a Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting with other New York Times reporters for their comprehensive and courageous coverage of America’s deepening tactical and political engagement in Afghanistan and Pakistan and the numerous eruptions of instability in the region.

88 2008: Modern IranKelly Golnoush Niknejad ’05, M.A.’06
Editor-in-chief Kelly Golnoush Niknejad founded the online outlet Tehran Bureau in 2008 to provide serious independent journalism about Iran and its influence on the Muslim world. Now partnering with PBS’s Frontline, Tehran Bureau has also included reporting from Leila Darabi ’06, Jim Higdon ’05 and Thor Neureiter ’11.

*89 2009: Faces of Iranian ProtestBorzou Daragahi ‘94
Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Borzou Daragahi crafted evocative portraits of the fragile and remarkable human lives behind the protests of Iran’s Green Movement. His work was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting.

90 2009: An Overstretched Justice SystemAilsa Chang ’08
Ailsa Chang won the Daniel Schorr Journalism Prize for her incisive coverage on NPR’s All Things Considered of how a broken public defenders system sometimes leads to incarceration of innocent defendants.*91 2010: Pete Rose’s Corked BatBarry Petchesky ‘07
In a widely discussed story for Deadspin, Barry Petchesky revealed damning evidence that, against regulations and despite years of denials, baseball icon Pete Rose corked a baseball bat that was subsequently acquired by a collector.

*92 2010: Immigrants in AmericaFranz Strasser ‘09
Franz Strasser used his international perspective for Into America, a perceptive series of Web reports for BBC News that investigated various facets of immigrants’ experience in America.

*93 2010: The Wreck of the Lady MaryAmy Ellis Nutt ‘95
Amy Ellis Nutt won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing for superlative reporting in the Newark Star-Ledger on the mysterious sinking of a fishing boat that took six lives off the coast of New Jersey.

*94 2010: Big Banks in the Post-Bailout EraLouise Story ‘05
In a series for the New York Times, Louise Story reported on the privileges big banks have over their clients and the conflicts of interest in investment banking, raising questions about the practices and public obligations of banks in the post-bailout era.

95 2011: Revolution in EgyptRawya Rageh ’06
Reporting for Al Jazeera English on air and on Twitter, Rawya Rageh was in Cairo’s Tahrir Square for the dramatic protests that toppled Hosni Mubarak and marked the historic bloom of the Arab Spring.

A 9.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami and nuclear meltdown in 2011 subjected Japan to one of the biggest disasters ever. Many Columbia journalists, including Yuka Hayashi, Rob Schmitz, Jonathan Soble, Enrique Acevedo Quintana, Lam Thuy Vo, Yoree Koh, and Lim Wui Liang, played significant roles in reporting the story for a range fo news outlets.

*97 2011: The Struggle for India’s FutureVinod K. Jose M.A. ‘08
Writing in India’s journal The Caravan, Vinod K. Jose crafted an extensive profile of Manmohan Singh, revealing how the lofty hopes for his tenure as India's prime minister have foundered in the face of corruption and scandal.

*98 2011: A Pilgrimage to MeccaRubaina Azhar ‘96
Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Rubaina Azhar chronicled her first journey to Mecca and reflected on how the hajj affected and illuminated her Muslim faith and identity.

*99 2011: Surviving Catastrophe in TurkeyMimi Wells ‘11
Writing in the New York Times, Mimi Wells eloquently portrayed the strength and dignity of a large Turkish family living day-by-day in a tent after a massive earthquake rendered buildings across their city dangerously prone to collapse.

*100 2012: Tracking a Mysterious Kidney DiseaseSasha Chavkin M.S. Stabile ‘10
Working with the Center for Public Integrity and using new opportunities like Kickstarter to help fund his research, Sasha Chavkin has traveled the globe reporting on a mysterious chronic kidney disease killing thousands of impoverished agricultural workers.